2013年7月31日水曜日

Summer's the Time for...

Horror.
Japan has a tradition for telling ghost stories in the summer to keep
you cool - the scary stories that sends chills down your spine are
supposedly effective to beat off the summer heat. (I don't get chills I
get scared that's what)

I've mentioned a while back about the 'oh holy John Belushi on a pogo stick' levels of absolute NO I have towards the horror and gore genre.
I don't like scary things in general - I'm a real wuss, I know.

But I do have exceptions... sort of?
I love Natsuhiko Kyougoku's famous Hyakki Yakou series, which is a mystery novel series that's so thick you can hit someone on the head and probably knock them unconscious. It's not necessarily horror per se, but I think it somewhat comes close. It's definitely scary, deals with really freaky things. There's girls' bodies stuffed in boxes, a lady who's been pregnant for twenty months, a husband who keeps coming back alive no matter how many times the wife kills him, a mass murder in a temple... it's hard to explain, it's very Japanese in its sensibilities and aesthetics and sense of unease. And I love it.
As much as I can't do horror or gore, I love reading the spooky, eerie stories with crazy murder scenarios. I tend to deal better with horror/scary stuff in prose. I can't do horror films and such...
Hell, I even hesitated to watch Paranorman (which was awesome by the way).

I guess the point today is as much as I can't deal with one thing, there's always exceptions and specific boundaries.